Manulife posts strong H1growth in premium income

MANILA, Philippines - Manulife Philippines, the local unit of the Canadian insurance giant, posted strong growth in its premium income in the first six months of 2011, reflecting the company’s internal capabilities as well as its ability to rise with the surge in the Philippine economy.

Based on initial data, its total premiums and deposits rose 46 percent in first half of 2011 over the same period last year. 

Wealth sales climbed 300 percent while weighted insurance sales grew 63 percent, resulting in a combined total weighted sales growth of 75 percent in the first semester.

Weighted sales, or annualized premium equivalent (APE), refer to 100 percent of regular insurance sales plus 10 percent of single premium insurance sales.

Manulife Philippines president and chief executive officer Indren Naidoo attributed the improvement in wealth sales to the increased awareness of the benefits of its unit-linked insurance products as well as improvements in local economic and market conditions.

In the second quarter alone, total wealth sales climbed 224 percent and insurance sales grew 64 percent, resulting in a combined total weighted sales growth of 74 percent.

Total premiums and deposits rose 45 percent over the same period in 2010.   

“The ability to sustain the strong performance growth in 2011 was attributed to both productivity gains as well as the expansion of agency and bancassurance channels,” Naidoo added.

In the first three months of 2011, Manulife Philippines launched an enhanced regular pay investment-linked insurance product. The following quarter, it introduced FirstProtect (for the agency channel) and ProSecure (for the bancassurance channel).  

FirstProtect and ProSecure are affordable broad market insurance products that guarantee life and accident protection benefits with premiums for as low as P15 a day.  

In 2010, total premiums amounted to P3.97 billion, moving Manulife to seventh best among the country’s 34 life insurance companies. The figure is also 24 percent higher than the P3.2 billion in 2009.

Manulife Chinabank Life Assurance Corp., the joint venture bancassurance company with China Banking Corp., reported premiums worth P974 million, which is over 200 percent higher than the P318 million recorded in the same period in 2009.